The pretty stick, and other self critical anomalies...

So the other day I turned to my friend Kaitlyn and I told her, "Someone hit you with the pretty stick."

This is one of my favorite phrases.

I have adopted this phrase, and many others, from my favorite TV show Gilmore Girls. Though later I found myself considering this phrase, with much more curiosity than it probably warrants.

"Someone hit you with the pretty stick." It is a somewhat unconventional way to give the basic compliment, "You look super cute today!" However, wording it this way sparked some interesting thoughts. We've all heard or read articles, news reports, books, et cetera about the plethora of self image issues that young people - girls in particular - face these days. I do not want to repeat their overly-expressed and exposed thoughts, but offer some of my own.

Girls these days are straight up insane. It would be exhausting and fruitless to attempt to deny this fact. Granted, I usually take approximately 20 minutes tops in the morning to get ready for school. (My estranged relationship with sleep doesn't exactly make me a morning person, so I sleep as late as absolutely possible on school mornings. This usually involves me rolling out of bed at 7:10ish, when I have to leave for school by 7:30 at the very latest.) But I have taken upwards of an hour to get ready to go out sometimes. I have close friends who take nearly 2 hours to get ready for school every morning.

And it's ridiculous. Why the freaking hell do we do this??? Today, since we had exams, I wanted to dress comfortably. I wore baggy sweatpants, a flannel shirt, moccasins, and almost no makeup. It was great. It was cold, and my sweatpants and flannel kept me warm. I had to sit for hours at a time, and I had no tags, seams, or tight jeans digging into my hips the whole time. Why don't I dress that way everyday? Oh yea, I guess because society expects a higher standard of fashion than that.

Some how I feel that because I am talking about self image issues, and because I am a dancer, that I'm almost legally required to relate the two. Luckily, my train of thought as I pondered this, traveled in that very direction.

Because I am a dancer, I have been taught to analyze the way my body looks from a very young age. I am not just talking about how skinny we are, or are not - though unfortunately that seems to be a big part of it. I am mostly talking about technique, and other factors that are so totally not within my control.

I have spent a large chunk of my life in front of  giant freaking mirrors, wearing skin-tight leotards and tights, literally being judged the whole time. Striving in vain for perfection. I am relatively in shape and I am very aware that I am thin, and that I have good technique. But when you are standing in a line of girls all wearing the same skin-tight leotards and tights, you automatically notice those stupid little things. The fact that the girl next to you is the tiniest bit skinnier, prettier, a couple inches shorter, more tan than you, and her feet don't sickle slightly en pointe the way yours do.

In the world of reality, maybe none of these things matter to you, but in the moment, it seems so incredibly important that your arabesque is significantly lower than 'little miss perfect's'. Frankly, 'little miss perfect' is probably standing next to you wishing that she was a couple of inches taller, like you, and that she could whip out triple pirouettes the way you can.

Even outside of the world of dance, we essentially beat ourselves up to look pretty, skinnier, taller, shorter, tanner. Beating ourselves up with the pretty stick if you will.

I still love the term "someone hit you with the pretty stick", but using it may never seem the same to me.

I only have myself - and my over analytical mind - to blame.